Brooklyn park filled with rats, area residents say

CARROLL GARDENS, Brooklyn — Most are not a fan of what they call a growing problem here in Carroll Park in Brooklyn: rats.

"They don't really go to the play area, so it does not bother me that much, but it's not really a good feeling knowing that they are there," Helga Tauferova, a Carroll Gardens resident who uses the park regularly, said.

While PIX11 cameras didn't spot any, parkgoers assure us they are here.

"I wish it wasn't like that. I feel like there's just a huge rat problem in the city and in general in the subways. You see them all the time. This park is right on top of a subway," said another parent.

The City Parks Department said they received complaints from the community more than six weeks ago and since said "...we took aggressive action to mitigate and have already begun to see positive results."

Some of that action includes
- Daily trash removal
- Replacing open-top trash cans with ones with lids
- And the addition of more baiting traps

The mayor announced a rat reduction program over the summer, but the nearly $32 million effort only focused in Chinatown, the Lower East Side, East Village, Bedford Stuyvesant, Bushwick and the Grand Concourse section of the Bronx.

The city Parks Department and the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene confirm a total of 13 active burrows in Carroll Park, a number down considerably from about a year ago.